


Ivy Anne of Green Gablins

by AnaSparrow



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Fantasy - Fandom
Genre: Fantasy, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 23:19:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12420321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnaSparrow/pseuds/AnaSparrow
Summary: When Anne finds herself homeless after accidentally killing the unforgiving Mr. Hammond she is sent back to an orphanage where her magical talents are brought out by the secretive maid. All this to prepare her to help the Cuthbert's wage war on the nasty green gablins who are beginning to sneakily get the upper hand in peaceful, quaint and also quietly magical Avonlea.





	Ivy Anne of Green Gablins

Ivy Anne of Green Gablins

 

Chapter 1 Easy Ivy Over  
The growing forest whispered, easy ivy over, a children’s game chant, an invitation in her fevered brain. Her tongue sanded her cracked, dry lips cracked. A few feet below, an easy slide down the embankment and she would be at the small pond with its bubbling spring. Cool, clear water. All she needed to be able to make it to Mr. Hammond’s mill with his lunch bucket was a sip of cool water, she told her herself. One sip to refresh her dry throat. After that, she was certain her day would brighten, and she would be well soon. A positive dose of optimism had been her only medicine, all of her life. The spring bubbled and gurgled, calling to her.  
“Oh, silver spring of delicious light, with your deep reflecting pond. You are calling me to drink and so I shall accept your kind invitation,” she whispered dramatically, as this helped her, too. The Hammond children were all still sick, too, and she had to deliver their father’s lunch and get back to tending to them. Images of their small, pointed faces with noses running with green snot and runny eyes, coughing in her face swam into her blurry thoughts. Straight spine, she told herself, endure, even when there seemed to be no relief.  
Slipping down the embankment, she collapsed halfway, rolled to her back and while mopping her brow with the back of her hand, she wished for the water to come to her. “I only need one small drink,” she whispered. And then just like that a neat, thin spray came up and when she opened her mouth it spilled right in. When the chills shook her body, she pretended to build a fire and there one burned in a small ring of rocks. Pulling her torn, threadbare dress over her knobby knees, she pretended it was a fairy’s cloak. She could not decide if she imagined the lovely drink, the small ring of warming fire.  
There were times when Anne believed her soul was truly haunted, just as she had been so often accused. Rain had filled the branches of the trees, sliding off every leaf. Cold enveloped the world, but she barely noticed. In her short life, she had found a way to take her mind away from the unpleasant things in life. Ivy loved to read, and she always kept a book hidden in the waistband of her underwear.  
A familiar rumbling noise broke into her fevered thoughts. On the road, just above her, she heard the farmers rumbling their cart of tools. Moving quickly as she dared—she did not want the basket to spill its contents—she had to hide. She would be beaten soundly for losing Mr. Hammond’s lunch. Tucking herself into the bushes she would wait until they passed, and then hurry up, cut through the Growing Woods, and beat them to Mr. Hammond’s mill. Ivy could not move. When she tried to get up, she rolled over instead and lay on her side.  
A bee buzzed in a slow path near her nose. Both eyes crossed trying to follow it. Ivy Anne smiled weakly. A blue bird sitting on a low hanging branch twittered to her. She barely had the strength, but she picked up a slender branch and waggling it at the water, made a spray leap up and spray the bird. It flapped its wings and ducked its head and then sang her a playful song, which it cut off abruptly and began twittering again, this time flapping its wings in warning.  
“Dear Life,” she thought sadly, but dramatically, “I think I really might be breathing my last.”  
Before Ivy Anne could get up to run, a hand grabbed her by the back of her neck. Her whole body seemed to be lifted into the air. The bloodshot eyes of Mr. Hammond lashed out at hers.  
“I was on my way, I just needed a drink—“  
“Demon child! I see those wicked acts. Bringing that water to you. Hell is calling!” Mr. Hammond roared right as he plunged her whole head into the shallow pond. The water was freezing. His fingers dug into the back on her neck, her numb face was pressed into the bed of rocks. Air bubbled out of her lungs. She could not move.  
Desperate for a breath of air, just one final breath, she prayed to be freed. Mr. Hammond shoved her face harder into the water until it touched the soft bottom. Silt washed into her eyes. Do you even care to live another day? She asked herself. And then, her right hand closed over a rock, her arm whipped up, flew over her shoulder and she struck at the great head of Mr. Hammond over and over until miracle of miracles! His grip loosened and his weight fell away.  
Ivy Anne’s head came up on its own, her lungs drawing in a great breath of air. There at her side lay the bulging body of Mr. Hammond. His bloodshot blue eyes stared at the clouds above. The wild animals in the woods began murmuring in the way they did when an animal died. She grabbed ahold of his collar and shook him.  
“Mr. Hammond, are you dead?” Ivy Anne whispered as near to his ear as she dared to get. “I do not want to speak ill of the dead, sir, but you look bloated. And you do stink of cheap moonshine.”  
Both his hands had somehow fallen over his chest, as if he were clutching it. From somewhere in the distance she heard that wagon rumbling. Ivy Anne got to her feet, realizing at once that she had to move the poor dearly departed Mr. Hammond to the road where he could be discovered by his workers. And she could double back and get to the mill using the hidden pathway.  
To her surprise, when she prodded his side gently with just the very tip of her toe he immediately began rolling up the embankment, landing face up on the road. Ivy Anne, did not wait to see if he looked comfortable, or still horrified. She ran thorough the brambles, and slipped down into the old hidden, foot path and bent double, with the contents in that lunch basket clanging angrily, she got to the mill. There she found the place quite empty. Both doors of the workshop were wide open, but the wagon was gone. And so was the usual work crew.  
Ivy Anne set the basket on the work table and carefully removed the towel. No glass was broken, but the bread got wet. There was nothing for her to do for that.  
Ivy Anne left it to sit on the tree stump and worked the book out of her waistband. If she had killed Mr. Hammond, she would surely go to hell. The thought was confusing. Mr. Hammond was a vile, violent drunk trying to drown her. Ivy Anne tried to compose herself and read, but for the first time since she got a book in her hand, she could only pretend. Her tears wetted the page in great drops, bigger than rain.  
Later Ivy Anne would learn the tragic news of Mr. Hammond’s death. And in the wake of this, she was immediately returned to the dark, dreary dreaded orphanage, which for any child, but especially one with such a scope of imagination as Ivy Anne, was the same thing as the most fantastically imagined hell.


End file.
